


if you can't love me honey go on just pretend

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (foregone conclusion - you all know what happened to them in canon), Arranged Marriage, Backstory, Canon Compliant, F/F, Internalized Homophobia, Seduction, Teenagers, The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24628231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: Fifteen year-old Bellatrix Black, bored and avoiding studying for O.W.L.s, settles on seducing Amelia Bones as an extracurricular project.Written for Season of Kink 2020, "flirting/seduction," although the rating didn't go terribly high.
Relationships: Amelia Bones/Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Bellatrix Black Lestrange/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 32
Collections: Season of Kink





	if you can't love me honey go on just pretend

**Author's Note:**

> This reads fine as a standalone, but it also fits into my backstory verse with my other Black family fic. (For readers who got there first, I haven't contradicted myself about Bellatrix's sexual orientation - both the timeline and the point of view of the other fics are important.)
> 
> Title from "Bad Boyfriend" by Garbage.

Bellatrix Black was fifteen years old, steadily on her way to failing half her O.W.L.s, and bored.

Normally there was a crisis to distract her about when she started thinking about terrifying concepts like _the future_ and _politics_ and _having to go home for the holidays_ , but the stars had aligned on this February afternoon. Or possibly it was just that Narcissa had more sense than her older two sisters put together, and Reggie and Sirius were out of infancy, and Andromeda at thirteen was starting to get a grasp on acceptable public behavior even if she didn't have the details down. 

But this time Bella found herself washing up on a Friday afternoon free period with a disconcerting lack of urgent problems: no imminent expulsion for Andy to sweet talk the staff out of, no missed call heating her mirror and corresponding need to find out what Cissy needed help with (usually Sirius or Reggie but sometimes herself); no melt down or bizarre threat conveyed by post from an adult family member who should have been able to control themselves, but wouldn't. 

She considered and immediately discarded attempting to catch on homework. The quantity of her missed assignments had long ago reached titanic proportions and if she looked too closely she would break under all of the things she wasn't doing. It was better to do what she specifically felt like doing and otherwise ignore it all. If she started caring about her homework she'd never stop: a philosophy she also applied to ethics, relationships with people besides her sisters, and the prospect of adult life.

Usually her free time had the benefit of occurring very late at night, when she was too hazy for much thought to intrude, or passionately consumed by some random project or other. She wasn't entirely sure what to do with an hour to herself on a Friday afternoon. She lingered in the hallway, wishing the weather was better. She toyed with the prospect of a long walk down to the Slytherin dorms only to have to come back up all those flights of steps to get to Transfiguration, and her eyes aligned with a small crowd of older Ravenclaw students emerging from Charms classroom B.

Aha. A project, Bellatrix thought, and stooped as though she was fishing in her bag.

Amelia Bones was one year up in Ravenclaw. She was fiercely intelligent and striking in a way she was only starting to grow into, with honey blond hair and imposing height to match her features. She was from a family as respectable as Bella's own (and rumor would have it considerably less evil, a practically unheard of combination in wizarding Britain). Most interesting of all, she was also - at least per the more accurate of the student gossipers - a lesbian.

Bellatrix was also very much of the Sapphic persuasion but disinclined to go about kissing people who'd tell tales in locations where other people who would tell worse ones could see. Amelia probably had slightly less to worry about on that front, being the child of a loving father and his beloved, dead first wife. 

Bellatrix, on the other hand, had the sense to limit her adventures to girls who would be laughed out of the room if they claimed to have met Bellatrix Black for a snogging session at the edge of the forest. Caroline Grey, mudblood Gryffindor, was the latest and longest lasting so far. However, Caro had been getting sulky about the flat impossibility of anyone ever knowing anything about them and the inevitability of Bellatrix marrying her little cousin, as though any of this was Bellatrix's fault. Therefore no matter how well she kissed and how many packs of Gauloises she was willing to smuggle Bella that relationship was probably coming to an end.

Amelia Bones was not an obvious candidate for replacement, being a known lesbian and generally unsubtle. On the other hand, she would be _easier_ to sneak around with, since Bella could be seen around her in a sufficiently platonic sense without the family taking offense. Bella also had a feeling that gawky, intelligent, lonely Amelia might be fun to play with. And everyone knew she was homosexual but no one seemed to know who _with_ , so probably she wasn't a tale teller, anyway.

The rest of the Slytherin girls had gone ahead finally, accepting Bellatrix's unobtrusive demand for privacy. Bella tilted her head, listening until she heard Amelia mention the library, then straightened and moved off decisively, as though she'd finished with her bag.

Maybe she'd get some homework done after all, in between surveillance.

Amelia Bones carried around a large number of books and spent a larger proportion of her time reading. She did not appear to have close friends, though she was on academically cordial terms with most of the girls in her year and house. She did not, as far as Bellatrix could tell, currently possess a girlfriend, or if she did she was even more paranoid than Bellatrix about it. 

She received letters from her father and her stepmother, which she read and often ignored, and letters from assorted cousins which she usually answered, and _Extraordinary Equine_ , a weekly periodical on magical Britain's equestrian news. She had once been best friends with Morvydd Sturdevant, before people had started saying Morvydd must also be gay because of it; then Amelia had been rudely and abruptly dropped, back in her third year.

All this Bellatrix found out from a mix of actual personal surveillance, eavesdropping, and casually bringing related subjects up and waiting for someone to turn them to Amelia on their own. It took a few weeks, at the end of which Caroline had the anticipated conversation and dumped her. 

("Ah, finally," Bellatrix said. "I thought you'd never get around to it."

"What, you couldn't be bothered?" Caro spat.

"Well, I wouldn't want to take advantage of you and then drop you, it hardly seems fair with your position," Bellatrix said, a remark calculated to drive Caro into a rage over her superior attitude. She then left before Caroline caught her fighting not to cry.)

Bellatrix had considered her approach carefully, wanting Amelia to make the first move but also to think it was her own idea. She unbuttoned the top of her robe a bit further, not around Amelia specially but in general, made some more effort with her hair styling charms in the mornings and ordered violet perfume, which she knew was popular among lesbians in magical Britain and which Amelia was likely to associate with the subject but might not consciously recognize. 

Bellatrix went to the library more often, although she didn't usually sit within Amelia's vicinity, only in her line of sight. (Her grades had improved marginally as a result of this project after all; not the worst thing for fifth year.) She talked about magical theory, which she actually _did_ know quite a bit about - if not usually the bits assigned in a given week - with Andromeda, and with Diana Parkinson, the more intelligent of her current hangers on, in places where she was fairly certain Amelia would overhear snatches. Since her dorm mates were accustomed to finding her completely ignoring a week of homework in favor of completing a twenty hour enchanting project between the hours of midnight and four in the morning, this was not suspicious behavior.

It wasn't exactly that she cared about Amelia or even had a crush on her; it was mostly a game to Bellatrix. She had been explicitly taught about seduction and flirting, though she hardly needed to attract interest from eligible men, being engaged to baby Sirius. It was part and parcel of the standard pureblood girl's education, but Bellatrix had never before been at all interested in using _or_ misusing it, since she didn't like men at all. So trying to attract someone specific, going to great lengths to engineer an infatuation in someone else, was a way of stretching skills she had in theory but had never practiced. It was rather more of a challenge than noticing which of the prettier riffraff girls tended to stare at Bella's lips and cornering them in a back hallway to inquire about their interest in a snog, anyway.

She had also always had a tendency to get obsessed with a matter and chase it until it died. Life was easier when she was in the grips of a passion project; there was less space in her head for other emotions like despair.

She met with success on a rainy Monday in March. 

It had been about a month since the whole thing occurred to her. In that time Andromeda had gotten detention for trying to cast an eyeball exploding hex on a seventh year "to see what would happen," a punishment negotiated down from suspension by Bellatrix; Narcissa had called her in tears because _Sirius_ wouldn't stop crying, and Bellatrix had eventually identified a suspicion of an ear infection and told Narcissa which of the adults would acknowledge a request to take him to a healer; Bellatrix herself had received four separate detentions for failing to complete homework and fended off what she was steadfastly refusing to believe had been a pass from Slughorn, who should have more _sense_ than to insinuate anything about a Black girl; and Aunt Walburga had written Bellatrix a furious screed about suspicions of unchaste behavior with _Frank Longbottom_ of all people, who in addition to being male was neither attractive nor interesting. Oh, and Caro had broken things off.

None of this mattered for more than the time immediately occupied by it as long as she had some other goal to chase.

On that Monday, she was sitting in a library alcove, reading a letter from her uncle about the estate. They had begun to include Bellatrix in conversations about the management the last year or two. She would have been flattered in a distracted sort of way if she didn't know it was because she was going to marry Sirius whether she liked it or not; and also if not for the suspicion that they were waiting for her O.W.L.s to be over so that they could ambush her with a share of the family paperwork, as though raising all of the younger children of the house mostly unassisted was not enough for one girl.

Uncle Orion was telling her, this time, about the replacement of the draft team belonging to one of the stewards after a rather horrible barn fire last fall, negotiated in time for planting. He was considering whether to buy a second team, which the steward had asked about. There was more land under cultivation this year. Bellatrix knew bare bones practicalities about horses but she wasn't the horsewoman Andy was, let alone Aunt Walburga. She didn't have energy to take much interest in hunting. Anyway it wasn't a hobby Uncle Orion would approve of for his son's wife. Lady Black was supposed to cultivate the tenants, not terrorize them.

Bellatrix absently flipped open her sketchbook and began to fill in the lines of a draft horse, eyes skimming down the letter. She hadn't been to the estate in question recently or often enough to have any impression of the team that had died in the barn fire, but Uncle Orion had written that the new ones were bays. They were named May, June, October and Augusta, a series that made her wonder what was distinct about October. She gave the horse a blaze and filled in vague lines of another beside it. 

"Can I sit?" a voice said behind her. 

Bellatrix had been locked onto Amelia for weeks like the hounds on a running fox or muggle, and she didn't jump. "Go ahead," she said, looking up. "Want to see? I can't think if I'm remembering the harness right."

She'd guessed correctly that Amelia would have experience with draft horses from _her_ family's estate, and that she would be more interested than Bellatrix and remember the kit more accurately. Bellatrix told her about the relevant bits of the letter, remembering to insert the appropriate emotions over the barn fire. Then they spent an amusing fifteen minutes coming up with increasingly ridiculous ideas for how you would interpret an autumnal temperament in a horse, until she laughed too loudly at Amelia's suggestion that it wrote tragic poetry on the loss of its virility at gelding and they got kicked out of the library.

Bellatrix excused herself to go to class, not wanting to give Amelia too much of a taste at once, but she made sure to brush against her in the doorway out.

After that she had victory in hand. Amelia's eyes followed her in the halls, in the Great Hall at meals, and in the library, where she sat with Bella whenever there was a seat free near her. "Doesn't it _bother_ you?" Llamrei asked Bella in the clamor of Potions class clean up. "I mean, you know she's--" she lowered her voice conspicuously, " _A bulldyke_?"

"Clothes like that, hard not to know," Bellatrix said dryly. "--Oh, don't look at me like that. It's a bit sweet, isn't it? Like being trailed by a lost puppy. She told me the answers to half my Transfiguration homework last Thursday."

"I suppose it's not like boys are an option for you anyway," Diana said slowly and thoughtfully. 

Diana really was too smart for anyone's good. 

"What, and tarnish the virginity of Sirius Black's destined bride?" Bellatrix snorted. "I might as well be a nun until he graduates, in about fifteen years. Come on, let's not talk about boys, or girls, or particularly slow running sheep in _your_ case, Eric, it just depresses me. Agnes, have you heard back about your family holiday this summer?"

It took until late April for anything to _happen_. Bellatrix returned from Easter hols in her usual mixed state: on the one hand she'd had enough sleep, on the other her waking hours over the holiday had been a constant parade of stress, argument and worry. The weather was better now, at least. She went from the library out for a walk, making sure to keep her progress slow, and rewardingly Amelia caught up with her around the lake.

"Bella," Amelia said, shy and stop-start but intense all the same, in a way that said what a wonder she would be in about five more years when she learned to stand on her own feet instead of ducking constantly. (True, Bellatrix was a year younger, but Bellatrix had been adult-like since she was six, and had to carefully learn to mimic silliness and air headed remarks to put others at ease in girlhood.) "I don't know if you - oh, I shouldn't be saying this at all."

"What is it, Amelia?" Bellatrix asked. She smiled a little, and tried to soften her eyes. The Blacks as a whole didn't merely look, they glared or pierced or regarded coldly. It could be a problem when one wanted a different emotional affect.

"I was just trying to say - I know that you're not interested - that you don't like girls the way I - but I thought, if there was _any_ chance, I had to know. I had to find out first, so I could be - resigned to my fate, properly. I - why don't you _say_ something?" Amelia broke off.

Bellatrix was fighting very hard not to start laughing. She had been right, back in February. This _was_ fun. 

"Amelia," she said, and caught the other girl's hand when she might have turned to bolt. "It's traditional to start with poetry, or gifts, or at the very least an invitation, you know."

"What?" Amelia said. "--You're not running away."

"How observant of you." Bellatrix took her other unresistant hand and tangled their fingers together. She thought of kissing Amelia but she'd made it a rule in the game that she wanted Amelia to kiss her first, and she didn't want to do it enough to break her rule just yet. Her heart raced with the joy of competition, of a race nearly won. She could see why all the other pureblood girls couldn't stop practicing once they figured this out, and went around having affairs and getting into trouble after they married.

"Do you - feel this way, too?" Amelia asked. Her lashes were like dark gold against her skin. 

"I've been watching you for weeks," Bellatrix breathed, which was strictly true, and then _finally_ Amelia leaned down and pressed her lips to Bella's. She was an accomplished kisser, much better than Caro. 

Bellatrix never did find out who else Amelia had been exploring homosexuality and sin with, but that wasn't the only thing she had learned from it, either.

Their affair lasted slightly more than six months. It encompassed about twenty holiday letters and a few clandestine meetings; a great number of walks around the lake; an occasion on which Bellatrix got very drunk and sat outside the Ravenclaw common room for three hours arguing philosophy with the eagle knocker while a bemused Amelia tried to keep score; and three or four late night arguments about whether it was reasonable or not for Bellatrix to refuse to marry the way Amelia had every intention to. 

Bellatrix was, in fact, debating whether to reclassify Amelia from a game to an actual relationship by the November of her sixth year. Then Slughorn caught them together in Bella's bed in the Slytherin dorms.

**Author's Note:**

> Liked this fic? [Reblog it on tumblr](https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/post/620466286140571648/if-you-cant-love-me-honey-go-on-just-pretend), or just come talk to me!


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